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Bookworm on Jul 03 2011 at 10:36 pm | Filed under: Anti-Americanism, Hollywood
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I’ve made a contribution toward Aurora in Zach and abc’s name.
Well… yes. They hate America because America would destroy the corruption of the Left’s darkness imbibed entropy. Light pushes back the darkness, for a time. Then again, without any light, there will be no shadow either, so the shadow will be lacking something to parasite off of.
Suek/Sadie, did you two ever join that citizen producers thing I mentioned before? I heard someone here was interested in non-Hollywood movies, but didn’t want to get into the whole foreign language film industry.
Hollywood is Mordor! (tee hee)
Don’t you hate it when modern Hollywood makes movies where the banker is the bad guy (It’s a Wonderful Life, 1946), or where corporate guards savagely attack union organizers killing a man (Grapes of Wrath, 1940), an innocent man is convicted by a racist judicial system (To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962), overt social commentary (Sullivan’s Travels, 1941), wealthy capitalists oppressing workers (Modern Times, 1936), an American who openly disavows his nationality (Casablanca, 1942), a protagonist in the ruthless pursuit of power (Citizen Kane, 1941), ethnic conflict in urban America (West Side Story, 1961), sexual ambiguity (Some Like it Hot, 1959).
Oh, and corruption of the oil industry and racism (Giant, 1956).
I think we’ve rattled the junior Zachs so badly that they’ve had to call in a shill. Notice that the writing above isn’t as wooden as the kids’ usual stuff. Nevertheless, it is a tiny bit too facile. So, I will Martelize it:
—Exceptions test the rule. Mr. Morte Main mentions 10 films over a 26-year period that he claims refute the video’s assertions. Let’s see. . .an industry that at its height produced 600 movies per year probably produced—let’s be conservative and call it 400 films per year—10,000+ films in that span. Maybe he could come up with a few more titles that would show just how big and relentless this wave of anti-American, anti-capitalist filmmaking was?
—Zach’s usual attempt to slip an untruth past us. An innocent man was not convicted by a racist judicial system in “To Kill a Mockingbird.” See, Zach, if you would bother reading the citations and texts you are plagiarzing, you would realize that Tom Robinson was proven innocent because the racist system you salivated over here obviously wasn’t that racist.
—Let’s see, where else Zach’s lack of comfort with English. Rick Blaine doesn’t disavow his nationality in “Casablanca.” That’s like saying you disavow your humaness or your digestive system. What you meant to say was disavow his citizenship. This quibble is secondary because there’s no point in the movie where Rick does any such disavowing. More routine dishonesty from Zach.
—”A protagonist in ruthless pursuit of power” in “Citizen Kane.” Wow, does Bill Shakespeare know about this?
—Sexual ambiguity in “Some Like it Hot.” Boy, you really are on a college kid streak! The “ambiguity”—guys dressing like girls to avoid the mob—was really, really deeply explored, wasn’t it? I was so impressed by how touchingly it raised issues of gender self-identification and moved America toward a kinder, gentler treatment of drag queens.
—Zachy, maybe your best one is the attempt to show that Capra was squatting over America to take a big one in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Because Potter is a banker, we can assume that the movie is an expose of the evils of capitalism. Aside from the fact that the protagonist also happens to run a financial institution, you (or rather whomever wrote your snark for you) miss the entire point of the movie. It’s not about the evil of institutions, it’s about evil in men’s hearts. I know you reject that notion, therefore will continue to misunderstand most of the conversations here.
Martel, you just eviscerated and deballed Z here on the To Kill a Mockingbird thing.
STOP KILLING MOCKINGBIRDS LIKE Z, MARTEL!
Z doesn’t think of himself as human enough to hold evil in the heart, Marty.
Charles Martel: 10 films over a 26-year period that he claims refute the video’s assertions.
We chose just a few of the most important and popular films from the good ol’ days; important because they highlight social and cultural issues, and popular because they tell a good story. Nor are the films anti-American, though they often highlight negative aspects of American culture.
Charles Martel: An innocent man was not convicted by a racist judicial system in “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
“I shut my eyes. Judge Taylor was polling the jury: ‘Guilty … guilty … guilty … guilty …’ I peeked at Gem: his hands were white from gripping the balcony rail, and his shoulders jerked as if each ‘guilty’ was a separate stab between them.” — Harper Lee
Charles Martel: Rick Blaine doesn’t disavow his nationality in “Casablanca.”
Major Strasser: What is your nationality?
Rick: I’m a drunkard.
Charles Martel: Wow, does Bill Shakespeare know about this?
Now you got it. It’s been downhill ever since that Billy Shakespeare has been writing scripts for Hollywood. We mentioned one above.
Charles Martel: Because Potter is a banker, we can assume that the movie is an expose of the evils of capitalism.
Heh. The FBI thought so, and in a 1947 memo considered it part of the Communist infiltration of Hollywood. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Of course, people were very familiar with bankers taking people’s homes and farms during the Great Depression. Potter is depicted as consumed by greed, a personal failing, but a social failing as well, given his position of power.
Charles Martel: The “ambiguity”—guys dressing like girls to avoid the mob—was really, really deeply explored, wasn’t it?
One of the great last lines in cinema:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYUfPTeE0DM
Zach, I stand corrected: Tom Robinson was convicted by a racist jury. I would have made a better point if I had said that the movie also showed how simple courage and decency was not in as short a supply in the South as folks like you insist.
Your other objections are either non sequiturs or just silly. They do not answer my criticisms of your commentary and remain standing on their own.
The point you were attempting to make in mentioning the movies you did was to show that Hollywood has always been critical of the status quo. But you did not attempt to discuss the sea change in Hollywood’s attitudes toward America, which has shifted from an often harsh but always constructive concern for her faults to an outright contempt for her exceptionalism and the mores of the people who live in flyover country. This is typical of your misdirection. It’s a magic that may work on other sites, but here is something that everybody sees through.
Consider how Hollywood treated WW2 and how it treated the Iraq War. There was a big difference, as Hollywood churned out movies in support of the war effort for WW2 by the truckload. The best that one could say about most of the movies that Hollywood made that dealt with the post 9/11 situation was that they were ambivalent, such as Syriana. It is no accident that many Hollywood movies make more money overseas than in the US. We are not all masochists.
There is an irony about the Z-Team‘s claim about Grapes of Wrath. Stalin considered Grapes of Wrath so pro-American that he banned its showing in the USSR. Pro-American? Grapes of Wrath showed the impoverished, exploited , downtrodden US proletariat driving automobiles: an economic status beyond everyone but the Nomenklatura in the Workers’ State of Joe Stalin.
In support of the Z-team, consider the previous Hollywood influence of Commies and Commie sympathizers. An article in Reason, points out that due to strict script control, it was difficult if not impossible to put propaganda into Hollywood films, except in support of the war effort. Nonetheless, there was a way that hidden Reds could influence Hollywood- in internal politics and also in which film projects saw the light of day. From the Reason article, here is an example of Red influence in internal Hollywood politics,
During the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact, for example, actor Melvyn Douglas (Ninotchka) and screenwriter-director Philip Dunne (Wild in the Country) proposed that the Motion Picture Democratic Committee, a conclave of industry Democrats, condemn Stalin’s invasion of Finland in late 1939. But the group was actually secretly dominated by Communists, and it rejected the resolution. As Dunne later described it in his 1980 memoir, Take Two: A Life in Movies and Politics, “All over town the industrious communist tail wagged the lazy liberal dog.”
Famed Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo discarded his previously strident pacifism the minute Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. Before June 22, 1941, Dalton Trumbo wrote, “I would trade democracy for life,” in his anti-war classic Johnny Got His Gun. After June 22, 1941, Dalton Trumbo would trade life for defending the Soviet Union. After June 22, 1941, Dalton Trumbo turned people into the FBI for wanting to purchase Johnny Got His Gun.
From the same article in Reason, which shows how Reds influenced which projects saw the light of day:
But if Comintern fantasies of a Soviet Hollywood were never realized, party functionaries nevertheless played a significant role: They were sometimes able to prevent the production of movies they opposed. The party had not only helped organize the Screen Writers Guild, it had organized the Story Analysts Guild as well. Story analysts judge scripts and film treatments early in the decision making process. A dismissive report often means that a studio will pass on a proposed production. The party was thus well positioned to quash scripts and treatments with anti-Soviet content, along with stories that portrayed business and religion in a favorable light. In The Worker, Dalton Trumbo openly bragged that the following works had not reached the screen: Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and The Yogi and the Commissar; Victor Kravchenko’s I Chose Freedom; and Bernard Clare by James T. Farrell, also author of Studs Lonigan and vilified by party enforcer Mike Gold as “a vicious, voluble Trotskyite.”
Perhaps the Z-Team has a benign view of Americans of the Commie persuasion. I do not, as I grew up with too many refugees from the Iron Curtain who were traumatized by the Real Live Version of Communism, which was decidedly different from the dream version that existed in the imaginations of Dalton Trumbo and others.
http://reason.com/archives/2000/06/01/hollywoods-missing-movies
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=9274
Charlie’s Silver Hammer:
But you did not attempt to discuss the sea change in Hollywood’s attitudes toward America, which has shifted from an often harsh but always constructive concern for her faults to an outright contempt for her exceptionalism and the mores of the people who live in flyover country. This is typical of your misdirection.
Grapes of Wrath is an example here, as it has a sympathetic portrayal of Okies. A sympathetic portrayal of Okies and them from flyover country is harder to find in Hollywood these days.
If the Z-Team considers me mistaken, then the Z-Team may fund my viewing of movies so that I may have reason to recant my views. I haven’t paid to see a Hollywood movie in a decade.
Gringo, my wife and I made the mistake of renting a Drew Barrymore movie the other night about a long-distance relationship—he’s in New York and she’s in San Francisco.
It was by turns disgusting and embarrassing. The protagonists jump into bed first then fall in love. The passion of their love affair is demonstrated by how many ways they can find to jump each other’s bones throughout as opposed to any moment of real tenderness that lasts for more than a few seconds. A phone sex scene made me wonder if Barrymore, a comedian I have always liked, realized how much she debased herself.
The real turn-off is that the movie is directed at 20 somethings, and you can tell from the content and direction that the producers think this is how modern “romance” is conducted and how modern youth expect to see it portrayed. While people may diss Hollywood and say it overly romanticized love affairs during the Code era, at least there was some attempt to appeal to higher level of the body than the crotch. It’s haunting to hear the sighs of girls and young women in the audience on a show like “So You Think You Can Dance” whenever a couple does a waltz. The expression of grace, tenderness and romance is something they are starved for.
Zach cleverly redirected this thread to a discussion of the old movies, when the point of the post was the depravity of the new movies and the political agenda behind them. There is really no debating that, is there?
Good call, DQ. The tactic goes back to the Sophists, who were the bane of Socrates. In the modern era, Alinsky incorporated it into his organizing strategy, and you can see it all the time in Zach’s method of pretending to dicuss a given topic while trying to direct attention away from criticisms that he can’t refute.
Or as Zach himself would say after a hurried visit to a Wiki site or online dictionary, “Plus ca change, plus la meme chose.”
Don Quixote: Zach{riel} cleverly redirected this thread to a discussion of the old movies, when the point of the post was the depravity of the new movies and the political agenda behind them.
Most readers can see that we were addressing the topic. We pointed to prominent examples of older movies that also illuminate negative aspects of American culture. Indeed, It’s A Wonderful Life was considered by many to be communist propaganda. Today, it’s considered a classic. We could show the same with classic literature, such as Twain, Thoreau, Steinbeck or Fitzgerald.
Z-Team
Most readers can see that we were addressing the topic.
Then why is it that the comments on this thread disagree with you?
While the hidden and not so hidden Reds in Hollywood like Dalton Trumbo- whose “deeply held” pacifist principles could be jettisoned in a New York minute at the wishes of Onkel Joseph – in a certain manner supports your point of view, Mr. Trumbo was a Stalinist shill. Only a fool or a Commie would embrace the political side of Dalton Trumbo- though he was a very fine writer.
Gringo, if you were to pin Zach down and keep him from Googling Dalton Trumbo, he would have no idea what you’re talking about. Even if he were to find a sympathetic Internet reference to Trumbo that he could shoplift, he still wouldn’t get your reference.
There has yet been one regular here at Bookworm that believes Z is on point and correct.
Now that’s a consensus even Z can’t ignore.
Ymarsakar:
Now that’s a consensus even Z can’t ignore.
But the Z-Team will, the Z-Team will.
To Kill a Mockingbird, 1962 is about Atticus Finch, a local who fights the good fight of the rule of law and of justice, against the prejudices and injustices of his day. Much akin to the modern era where people must defend Duke Lacrosse players from false charges because the prosecution and the entire legal system is crooked. The assumption is that lawyers and judges go bad. The exception only proves the rule.
The jury isn’t even the jury in the movie. The jury is the audience and that’s the real verdict that gets handed down. Because while the movie jury can convict locals as they see fit, their verdict is overruled at a higher level. It isn’t the Supreme Court. Rather, it’s the verdict of the audience as they watch the ending. The movie is quite obvious in how it portrays the justice or lack of it being done in the trial. It’s not that clever or mysterious. Except perhaps to the young.
Far from To Kill a Mockingbird being a movie about injustice being done, it’s a movie about justice being striven for, regardless of one’s racial identity. This propaganda line takes effect even afterwards. To believe the jury can convict without appeal or sanction from any other authority is unlike the system we have. But even if it was the case in the past, the movie itself provides a second jury to cast the real verdict, to overturn the town jury’s. And the verdict passed down by the higher appeals court and its jury, was not guilty. It also foreshadows certain things, because the town’s old guard believes they must presume guilt in order to maintain the social status of whites vs blacks but it won’t be the old guard that decides such things in the future. The Old Guard did as the prosecutor in the DUke Lacrosse case believed he must do: charge the students because they were white and he could gain more power over blacks and whites if he got a guilty verdict on trumped up charges and evidence. It’s a social circle thing. They do what their social peers expect them to do. They inevitably run up against justice or the rule of law using their hamhanded tactics. But when Atticus’ children grow up, what verdict will they pass if they face again this race consciousness issue? The seeds are being planted, with a newer generation that may not have the same prejudices as the old one. If it was just about an old prejudicial jury on a race war being used as movie propaganda to inflame black communities into doing another Watts riot like what the Left usually does with the KKK, Duke Lacrosse situation, and false flag operations by blacks to hang up white sheets to scare other blacks, then one might say that the presentation is anti-American in nature. Because it not only presents the problem, but it makes the problem worse in duration and extent. Leroy Jenkins. But that’s not what the older Hollywood movie had in mind. Those people wanted a positive, optimistic, solution, while at the same time recognizing the issues of the day as what they were. The Left doesn’t want to improve America. The Left wants to control America and then tell America how to improve itself for the benefit of the Left. It’s the difference between giving your wife money and letting her spend it as she sees fit, and giving her money and beating her when she buys what you told her not to. There’s a difference there, and it’s not in the giving of money. The Left’s evil rests not in their recognition or non-recognition of reality. Their evil rests in what they propose to do about the problems of the day and their evil rests in the amount of problems the Left actually causes in order as an excuse to gain more power.
Waiting for race issues to solve itself by just letting the new generation forget the problems and prejudices of the Old Generation, is not what the black racists and Black Panther terrorists and Islamic Army black converts want to do. It’s not a way for them to gain power and influence. They need a real race war to get the absolute obedience of the blacks in America. They don’t want to “wait” for it to get better, precisely because if it does get better, they’ll lose power. They’ll lose their hold over the black communities. If the problem of race got solved by just waiting 3 generations for people to forget about color and class differences between blacks and whites, that will not benefit the Al Shaptons and Jesse Jacksons. This is why they keep alive the idea of racism and promote more racism. They need racist ideology to flourish in order to have an enemy to beat. They need INSTITUTIONAL RACISM to exist under whites, in order to hurt whites and blacks. There’s a reason why Obama keeps blaming the white man, when the black man keeps blaming the “Man (who is white)” for all of the problems black people caused. It’s a social thing.
Robinson was ruled to be not guilty by the only jury that mattered. The future one. The future trial holds absolute precedence over the trials of the past.
Hollywood, in order to make Mockingbird into an anti-American film, would simply have removed the option of waiting for new generations to forget race. They wouldn’t have had an Atticus Finch or if they had, it would have been a lawyer first and a father a distant 9th. HIs children would not have been told anything and his children would actually support the racist position, by listening to their peers in school, rather than Atticus, the father-authority figure in Leave it to Beaver style. By juxtaposing racial injustice with no option other than class warfare and using the force of government violence to “change” things with “hope and change”, that would generate an anti-American solution and verdict. It’s what Hollywood is doing now. It’s what they did not do in the past, 60 years ago. It’s because actual patriots were working in Hollywood movies back then, and now… there aren’t patriots working in Hollywood movies. They’re working for Leftist directors and studios, which sell movies to the world, not to Americans.
It’s gotten so bad that people can’t even recognize what old Hollywood movies was about. It’s too foreign a concept to comprehend juxtaposed against the Left’s evil of today.
Gringo, he’ll wave his hands and try not to think about it. Just like he waves his hands at me about executing Leftist criminals and corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, Which Need Killing, and tries to pretend he is doing so on moral, rather than selfish, reasons.
Cognitive dissonance works when people constantly shift the goal posts and deceives people. But the first person they must always and continuously deceive, is themselves.
Hollywood has a very dirty secret they won’t tell you.
It’s pretty simple. In order for them to do what they do and live the life that they do, they need security and bodyguards. I don’t mean the US military or the US Marines. I’m talking about BODYGUARDS. Professional security teams, for both events like the Grammies and for individuals.
Without people with either the weapons or the skillset to keep the “stars” safe, those stars would be ripped to pieces by anyone that felt like they didn’t get their piece of the autograph.
And yet… security was the last thing they wanted to see happen in Iraq. Precisely because they know how security gives people the freedom to act as they wish. Security has given Hollywood actors and directors the freedom to undermine and destroy America from within. Why would they wish security on allies of America or America itself?
As much as Hollywood is culturally against violence and the use of force or war… their entire lives are built upon using bodyguards and security personnel to FORCE PEOPLE AWAY from them.
Btw, these security professionals often started out as bouncers, hitting people and fighting on the streets.
So basically that’s how it goes. Some of them are former cops or former military, but not necessarily so.
If you want to hit them where it hurts, hit them where they are most vulnerable. Make it illegal for them to have bodyguards. Make it illegal for them to hire security for their events.
See what happens. They want to outlaw our guns, do they? Two can play that game.
Ymarsaker: Hoo Ah
Zachriel: Most readers can see that we were addressing the topic.
Gringo: Then why is it that the comments on this thread disagree with you?
Because the people on this thread typically ignore what we write and substitute their own version of a stereotypical Leftist view, a strawman.
Whittle: Now, 50 years ago, Hollywood made movies about heros and good triumphed over evil. There were villains of course, but a good if flawed man would come along and set things right again. The good and the right were the natural state of American in Hollywood half a century ago. Those days are long gone. The Left has slowly and methodically transferreed Hollywood into a negative image of what it once was. Now it’s a criminal or a whistle-blower or a union-organizer or a renegade lawyer or the last honest man in a corrupt military pointing out how evil and corrupt America is and always has been.
That’s the point we took issue with. Condemning one aspect of American culture is not the same as condemning America altogether.
Hollywood makes movies that sell. Yes, writers are informed by their ideology, but it doesn’t matter if they don’t tell a story people want to see. And this was true half a century ago, too. The movies we listed above are not just ordinary movies, but among the most influential Hollywood ever produced. Charles Foster Kane undermined the notion of the American Dream. It’s a Wonderful Life was considered by many to be Communist propaganda. There was no justice for Tom Robinson.
Ymarksakar, post #18 is the most intelligent and incisive comment about To Kill a Mockingbird that I’ve ever read, and sums up the moral difference between the contemporary right and left perfectly.
Z-Team : Most readers can see that we were addressing the topic.
Gringo: Then why is it that the comments on this thread disagree with you?
Z-Team: Because the people on this thread typically ignore what we write and substitute their own version of a stereotypical Leftist view, a strawman.
Where are those readers who agree with you? Why are they not commenting on this thread?
My comment #17 is confirmed in spades, as in Sam Spade.
Ymarsakar: The jury isn’t even the jury in the movie. The jury is the audience and that’s the real verdict that gets handed down.
The audience is made a witness to the injustice perpetrated against Tom Robinson.
Ymarsakar: Because while the movie jury can convict locals as they see fit, their verdict is overruled at a higher level. It isn’t the Supreme Court. Rather, it’s the verdict of the audience as they watch the ending.
The audience yearns for justice, but they see justice is denied. Tom Robinson may be fictional, but his story was quite common.
Ymarsakar: Far from To Kill a Mockingbird being a movie about injustice being done, it’s a movie about justice being striven for, regardless of one’s racial identity.
Yes, striving for justice is intrinsic to Atticus Finch, but you can’t just ignore that justice was not done. The jury and the legal system failed to ”do their duty.”
Ymarsakar: Robinson was ruled to be not guilty by the only jury that mattered. The future one.
Not the future one. The audience.
Ymarsakar: The Left doesn’t want to improve America.
While racial justice is mainsream today, at the time, it was certainly a cause of the Left.
Okay, back to the point. There really is no debating that most movies made today celebrate depravity and push a leftist, anti-American political agenda. Yes, Zach, I’m sure you can find ten highly popular exceptions that do no more than prove the rule, but the rule still holds. Even you wouldn’t deny that, would you?
Don Quixote: There really is no debating that most movies made today celebrate depravity and push a leftist, anti-American political agenda.
The biggest movie at the present time is Transformers: Dark of the Moon, which has a negative portrayal of the President. Is that what you mean by an anti-American agenda?
Don Q, there you go: one movie is the answer to your clearly stated “most movies.” Isn’t shorthand a wonderful thing?
In terms of inflaming race relations, if the audience was only a witness and could do nothing about injustice, then it would be Anti-American. But films with a subtle propaganda message, like Mockingbird, are not simply passive observers of bad stuff happening. Even modern Hollywood hasn’t change that stance.
Movies are designed to express concepts and invoke feelings. And the propaganda in movies is designed to nudge people towards certain solutions and policies. The more blatant this propaganda line is, the less artistic it becomes and the more political it is. A line which modern Hollywood crossed decades ago.
Firefly and Serenity are great productions. Precisely the producer and writers chose not to obey PC doctrine or anti-American, anti-Conservative beliefs. The resulting work appeals to conservatives, of course, but it also appeals to a great many other people who have gotten tired of Hollywood or the Left’s intellectual rigor more. Even if people believe in Global Warming and other Leftist cons, doesn’t mean they like Leftist religious lectures.
Charles Martel: Don Q, there you go: one movie is the answer to your clearly stated “most movies.”
Which is one more data-point than Don Quixote provided. We chose the top box office as it represents the largest number of theater-goers, in this case, by a very large margin.
*snickers* Pull the other one.
Zach, why are you such a pompous ass with this “we” stuff?
One point about the tenor of current movies is that movies made with a pro-American stance and/or not X-rated tend to do better about the box office- at least in the US. In spite of the financial message, Hollow-wood tends to churn out X-rated and/or anti-American films.
Marty, weak individuals need the power of numbers to back them up, or else they feel uncomfortable.
Gringo, the development process is skewed towards foreign theaters. Thus it has had the strange or perhaps intended effect of producing movies fit for the consumption of foreigners. Thus anti-American and presenting a stereotypical version of American culture and values.
The Left knew they didn’t need to sell well in the US, when they could just indoctrinate the kids and win the cultural wars without a fight. By making America look bad to the world, now that required a Hollywood.
Gringo: One point about the tenor of current movies is that movies made with a pro-American stance and/or not X-rated tend to do better about the box office- at least in the US. In spite of the financial message, Hollow-wood tends to churn out X-rated and/or anti-American films.
People keep making such claims. Don Quixote went so far as to there is “no debating that most movies made today celebrate depravity and push a leftist, anti-American political agenda.” It may be undebatable, but it’s apparently undemonstrable as well.
Color cannot be demonstrated to the blind. The concept is something that is pointless to argue over.
Gringo: One point about the tenor of current movies is that movies made with a pro-American stance and/or not X-rated tend to do better about the box office- at least in the US. In spite of the financial message, Hollow-wood tends to churn out X-rated and/or anti-American films.
Ymarsakar:
People keep making such claims. Don Quixote went so far as to there is “no debating that most movies made today celebrate depravity and push a leftist, anti-American political agenda.” It may be undebatable, but it’s apparently undemonstrable as well.
It is demonstrable for G-rated versus X-rated. And I quote:
More than 20 years of data is in – and the conventional wisdom is wrong.
The chances a Hollywood movie will win big at the box office are greatly enhanced by a family-friendly rating and strong moral content, defying the notion the entertainment industry is merely serving up what consumers want when they produce so many R-rated movies full of foul language, sex, drugs and immorality, shows a new study by the Christian Film and Television Commission, publishers of Movieguide.
According to the study, G-rated movies averaged nearly $92.2 million, more than 438 percent better than R-rated movies, making only $17.1 million.
“Our annual report to Hollywood shows once again, with relevant financial statistics, that people, including most moviegoers, want good to conquer evil, truth to triumph over falsehood, justice to prevail over injustice and beauty to overcome ugliness,” explains Ted Baehr, the president of the group. “They also want to take their whole family to the movies more often (assuming, of course, that ticket prices, concession prices and gasoline prices don’t get too high or prohibitive). And they want to see their religious faith respected and celebrated.”
Only one R-rated film made the top 10, and it was No. 10, “300,” with earnings of $210 million.
http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=58964
Somebody switched my name with Z again…
My name doesn’t really look like Z’s name, does it?
Gringo: It is demonstrable for G-rated versus X-rated.
Um, you posted information about R-rated films, not X-rated films. However, it does say that there has been a significant increase in what they consider positive content directly contradicting the supposed decline in standards.
Nevertheless, G movies do quite well on a per movie basis. There’s just so few of them, because families don’t go to the theater often, unless it’s for a major release. Teenagers watch far more movies, and though they don’t bring in as much per picture, the totals for PG, PG13 and R movies dwarf those for G movies. For instance, Twilight was rated PG13, and Harry Potter movies PG and PG13.
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/?view2=mpaa&chart=byyear&yr=2009
Hollywood appears to make movies in order to sell tickets.
If you go to the website Zach links to above, you’ll see that he’s based his statement on one year, 2009. The site gives access to more current information, namely 2010 and 2011 YTD. Go to YTD 2011 to see how Zach has filtered the information.
While it’s true that PG-13 movies’ gross “dwarfs” that of G movies, it is an inept use of that word to say the same thing about the grosses for PG and R movies. Now, look at the far right column labeled “Average.” A G movie takes in almost 5x as much as an R movie, 2x as much as a PG movie, and 1.5x as much as a PG-13 movie. Now notice how many G movies it has taken so far this year to rack up those figures: 8, versus 23 PG, 66 PG-13 and 71 R-rated movies.
Now, go back and re-examine Zach’s circular reasoning: There are so few G movies because families don’t go to the theater unless it’s for a major release. But the reason there are so few major releases is because families won’t go to the theater. Get it?
I’m sure Z believes the New York Times prints newspapers in order to sell advertisement as well. Which is why they gave MoveOn a 50% off on a front page advertisement…
Charles Martel: If you go to the website Zach links to above, you’ll see that he’s based his statement on one year, 2009.
We based on our statement on a review of multiple years.
Charles Martel: The site gives access to more current information, namely 2010 and 2011 YTD. Go to YTD 2011 to see how Zach{riel} has filtered the information.
We didn’t filter the information. We provided a link so you could access it yourself.
Charles Martel: While it’s true that PG-13 movies’ gross “dwarfs” that of G movies, it is an inept use of that word to say the same thing about the grosses for PG and R movies.
Cherry-picking—and just after making accusations. A look at the last few years shows that G movies represent only a small portion of the total gross for movies, but do well on a per movie basis. PG13 does the best overall in terms of gross receipts.
Charles Martel: There are so few G movies because families don’t go to the theater unless it’s for a major release.
The Aribtron Cinema Advertising Study 2007: “Movies are particularly important to teens and young adults, who go in larger numbers and go more often.”
Hence, movies are tailored to that demographic. Movies like Twilight, Harry Potter and Titanic.
Stop picking on Z, Marty. You know he can’t do numbers well.
Ymar, I know. I love it when he mangles English and then calls it “cherry picking” when somebody notes his deficiency. I’m pretty sure it’s his second language.
Z said he forgot that he ever went ahead and filled in his own name when someone shortened it. So add on “memory loss” as a disability to that list Mart.
FunkyPhD:
Did you happen to like that movie?